Thursday, January 16, 2003

SJ Mercury: Copyright ruling is a ripoff of consumers. Dan Gillmor. Sometimes I worry that people are oblivious to anything but immediate gratification. But I also sense that the public is beginning to grasp the scale of corruption that has led to incessant copyright extensions -- and will see the risks in even more theft from what should belong to all of us. [Tomalak's Realm] 11:58:55 PM

ACLU: You're being watched. When it comes to snooping on Americans, Big Brother has a lot more gadgets at his disposal, according to a new study from the American Civil Liberties Union. [CNET News.com] 11:58:23 PM

Patriotic Traitors. Someone calling him/herself "scarlet pimpernel" bcc'd this to me: Did you know the difference between "Patriot" and Traitor" is just two letters? Not surprisingly, those letters are "PR". Here are some examples: We know that Saddam Hussein has Anthrax, as well as botulism and bubonic plague, because the Reagan Administration GAVE him the starter cultures. The emissary on that mission? None other than Donald Rumsfeld. Don't believe me? Type "Rumsfeld" + "Anthrax" + "Iraq" into your search engine. Boy that Dick Cheney sure is a patriotic guy - he'd never give aid and support to our enemies, right? Think again. As CEO of Halliburton, he went around the UN embargo by using foreign subsidiaries Dresser-Rand and Ingersoll-Dresser Pump to rebuild Saddam Hussein's oil infrastructure just three years ago. Not only did he seek to do business with Mr. Hitler-with-a-bigger-mustache, he actually broke the law for the privilege! Estimates of the deal vary from between 23 and 78 million dollars, but Cheney's take amounted to approximately thirty pieces of silver (adjusted for inflation from 33 A.D.) Need proof? Type "Halliburton" + "Iraq" into your search engine. Admiral John Poindexter, recently put in charge of going over your e-mails and credit card receipts, is a convicted felon who sold Stinger missiles to the Iranians, used the profits to fund an international terrorist organization, and then lied to congress about it. Along with the Stinger missiles, Poindexter also delivered to the Ayatollah a Bible and a key-shaped cake. Go ahead and and call us democrats as unpatriotic as you like, at least we didn't bake any cakes for the Ayatollah. Too young to remember this? Keywords are "Poindexter" + "Iran". Worried that you or a loved one may have to serve in the Persian Gulf? Take a tip from the President: "George Bush" + "AWOL" To put all this in perspective, remember that Bill Clinton was hounded for six and a half years by the GOP over a two-bit Arkansas land deal where he actually lost money. Throughout his presidency, Bill Clinton was accused of practically every crime in the book except the one he was actually guilty of: not being a member of the Republican Party. Let's face it, if any of these clowns had been democrats, the GOP wouldn't be putting them into high office, they'd be putting them to death. For their own sake, please encourage your local democratic party representatives to grow a spine. Quickly. Failing that, here's some advice from Billy Bragg: "Start your own revolution and cut out the middleman." [Boing Boing Blog] 11:51:46 PM

So, Saddam, when did you stop beating your wife? Confirming evidence that our government is now taking its rhetorical plays directly from the pages of "1984" comes with this CNN report from defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld's press conference yesterday:   The failure of U.N. arms inspectors to find weapons of mass destruction "could be evidence, in and of itself, of Iraq's noncooperation" with U.N. disarmament resolutions, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Wednesday.... The chief U.N. weapons inspector, Hans Blix, told the U.N. Security Council last week that his teams had found no "smoking gun" in nearly two months of inspections but urged more "active cooperation" from Iraq. "The fact that the inspectors have not yet come up with new evidence of Iraq's WMD program could be evidence, in and of itself, of Iraq's noncooperation," Rumsfeld said. Commentary seems almost superfluous. Iraqis! If we find evidence of your WMD program, we will invade you! If we do not find evidence, that is evidence that you have not cooperated -- so we will invade you! What's really going on here, I suppose, is that Rumsfeld never wanted inspections to resume in the first place, always wanted to invade first and ask questions later, and is now trying to exploit the situation by closing a Catch-22 pincer upon the Iraqi dictator. Unfortunately for him, Rumsfeld's contortions wind up painting himself as a purveyor of paradoxical doublethink more worthy of "Dr. Strangelove" than the real world of geopolitics. [Scott Rosenberg's Links & Comment] 11:49:39 PM

Lexmark Sues To Shut Down Competitor With DMCA. Lexmark hits upon another questionable use of the DMCA: preventing third parties from selling remanufactured laser printer and inkjet cartridges. [Technology News from eWEEK and Ziff Davis] 11:44:11 PM

© Copyright 2003 Michael Alderete.